Tuesday, September 29, 2015

The evidence substantiating the scenario of the assassination as a national security event is extensive and compelling. It has generated enormous resistance even within the JFK community, where several of those who presented their findings in Santa Barbara were banned in a massive effort to suppress the truth and preserve the illusion that it was an event of a different kind. The view that “the Mafia did it” or “the Cubans did it” or “the KGB did it” are frequently advanced, but none of them could possibly have affected the cover-up that was indispensable to deceiving the American public for so long.

* Lee Harvey Oswald was working for the government when he was framed for the death of JFK

* Photos and films allegedly taken during the assassination were altered to conceal the truth

* Autopsy photos and X-rays were changed and faked to support a false account of the murder

* LBJ was a pivotal player–perhaps the pivotal player–who brought about the assassination

* George H.W. Bush was not only in Dealey Plaza but took an active role in carrying out the plot

* There were multiple shooters who tied the conspirators together to insure their mutual silence

* They included a Deputy Sheriff, an Air Force expert, an anti-Casto Cuban, a Police Officer and a Mafia shooter

* LBJ’s personal hit-man, who killed a dozen people for Lyndon, also appears to have been directly involved

* The Mafia could not have extended its reach into Bethesda Naval Hospital to alter X-rays and photographs

* Anti-Castro Cubans would have been unable to substitute someone else’s brain for that of JFK

* While the KGB had the capability to alter films, it could not have gained access to the Zapruder film

The experts who assembled for this unique conference–which explained how it was done, who was responsible and why, and how it was covered up–have invested decades upon decades of their lives to research on crucial aspects of the case, including the medical, the ballistic, and the film and photographic evidence. They include the leading authorities on the role of Lyndon Baines Johnson, on the involvement of George H.W. Bush, on the management of the cover-up, on the death of key witnesses intimately related to JFK and by others who personally knew the man accused of killing him. If you were there, you understand what went down. Here’s a chance for those who were not with us in Santa Barbara for the 50th to “catch up”.

THE SPEAKERS: “JFK: The Assassination of America”

Phil Nelson, “The Pivotal Role of LBJ in the Death of JFK”

Phillip F. Nelson is the author of LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination (2nd revised edition, 2011), in which he explains that Lyndon Baines Johnson was the cardinal instigator of the plot to kill JFK. LBJ forced his way onto the ticket as the Vice Presidential nominee in Los Angeles in 1960, telling reporters that he had studied history and had discovered that 1/4 of US Presidents had not survived their terms. He said he was “a gambling man”, but LBJ only bet on sure things. Phillip explains how Lyndon Johnson was uniquely positioned to assemble the key men–from the financiers to the operational planners and the cover-up experts–to complete the job. And it was all done at the expense of a “patsy” named Lee Harvey Oswald.

John Hankey, “What was George H.W. Bush doing in Dealey Plaza?”

John Hankey, an expert on the role of George H.W. Bush in the assassination of JFK, has produced and directed “JFK II: The Bush Connection” (2003), which is also known as “Dark Legacy: George Bush and the Murder of John Kennedy”. He also authored “Was George H.W. Bush involved in the assassination of JFK?” (2011). John has been teaching history and English in the Los Angeles City school system for nearly three decades, including exploring alternative approaches that suggest revisions to what passes for “history” in the courses and texts that are used for instruction in American history.

Peter Janney, “Tying Up Loose Ends: The Murder of Mary Meyer”

Peter Janney grew up in Washington D.C. during the Cold War era of the 1950s and 1960s. His father Wistar was a senior career CIA official. The Janney family was intimately involved with many of the Washington political elite that included the family of Mary and Cord Meyer, as well as other high-ranking CIA officials such as Richard Helms, James Jesus Angleton, Tracy Barnes, Desmond FitzGerald, and William Colby. In his gripping book, Mary’s Mosaic (2012), Peter illuminates the magnitude of real-life evil perpetrated by the CIA far beyond that which most of us could never imagine. A graduate of Princeton, Peter is a clinical psychologist who lives by the sea in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Larry Rivera, “The Pervasive Role of Buell Wesley Frazier”

Larry Rivera, the son of a career military man who served as CID officer in the Army, was residing in Germany on 22 November 1963 and, at age 6, will never forget his father’s reaction upon hearing of JFK’s murder: “Johnson!” Larry is a Certified Network Engineer, who also owns an automotive wholesale parts business. He has made a lifelong study of the JFK assassination. He first visited Dealey Plaza in 1991 and subsequently attended The ASK Symposium in 1993 for the 30th observance. He has done extensive work on Billy Lovelady and on Joe Molina and recently published on Buell Wesley Frazier and the Altgens6.

Ralph Cinque, “Oswald in the doorway: The bedrock of JFK truth”

Ralph C. Cinque has worked in the health field as a chiropractor and health spa operator, and he is the former president of an international physicians’ group. Ralph has also been an avid student of the JFK assassination for many years, and he has had a series of articles on the assassination published on Veterans Today and on LewRockwell.com. It was his observation that the clothing that Doorman was wearing rather than his facial features was the key to his identification, which has proven to be exactly right. He has been the moving force behind and the founder of the Oswald Innocence Campaign.

James H. Fetzer, “JFK: The Assassination of America”

James H. Fetzer, Ph.D., a former Marine Corps officer and McKnight University Professor Emeritus on the Duluth Campus of the University of Minnesota, has chaired or co-chaired four national conferences on the death of JFK. He produced the 4.5-hour long documentary JFK: The Assassination, the Cover-Up, and Beyond (1994), as well as edited Assassination Science (1998), Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000) and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003). Jim co-edits assassinationresearch.com, an on-line journal for the advanced study of the death of JFK, with John P. Costella, Ph.D. His columns on Veterans Today, including on JFK, are widely read.

Our stand is unequivocal: the hit was ordered by the highest levels of government, including key figures in the CIA, the FBI, the US military and from within Kennedy’s own administration, including his own Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Precisely as he claimed, Oswald was “a patsy”: he was framed to distract attention from those who were responsible. He was even captured in a famous photograph standing in the doorway at the time of the shooting, which is the critical fact about the assassination that the Americn government has sought to suppress for the past 50 years. And Judyth Vary Baker has now confirmed that crucial proposition beyond any reasonable doubt. Follow the evidence, as we explain it here, and you will understand why the death of JFK was in effect the assassination of America.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth. [NOTE: This is one in a series of articles being republished since veterans today.com deleted them in a dispute with its Senior Editor, Gordon Duff, about which I have since written several articles.]

The crux of The Warren Commission Report (1964) is the claim that the same bullet that hit JFK in the back also hit Gov. John Connally, which the report itself downplays the “magic bullet” theory as “not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission”.

That is complete rubbish, however, since if the same bullet did not both exit JFK’s throat and enter John Connally’s back, then those wounds have to be accounted for on the basis of separate shots and separate shooters, which implies a conspiracy to kill JFK.

A mountain of evidence proves that the shot that hit JFK in the back did not enter at the base of his neck but 5.5″ below the collar to the right of the spinal column, which was a shallow shot at a downward angle, making it all but impossible it should have taken an upward turn to exit his throat.

Jim Garrison vs. The Warren Report

With a deft verbal sleight-of-hand, the Warren Commission downplayed the significance of the “magic bullet” theory, where no less an authority than Michael Baden, M.D., the one-time medical examiner for New York City and head of the medical panel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) when it reinvestigated the case in 1977-78, has observed, “If the magic bullet theory is false, then there had to have been six shots from three directions”, which makes its tenability of enormous importance.

When we “look inside” The Warren Commission Report (1964), here is how it describes the matter (on page 16) after maintaining that the weight of the evidence “indicates” that only three shots were fired:

3. Although it is not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission to determine just which shot hit Governor Connally, there is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President’s throat also caused Governor Connally’s wounds. However, Governor Connally’s testimony and certain other factors have given rise to some difference of opinion as to this probability but there is no question in the mind of any member of the Commission that all the shots which caused the President’s and Governor Connally’s wounds were fired from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.

That Governor Connally’s testimony should have given them pause is unsurprising, since he maintained until his death that he had been struck by a separate bullet and not by the same bullet that hit JFK. Here is a critique of the Warren Commission’s stance by New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, to wit:

So which is correct? Was JFK hit at the base of the back of his neck as the Warren Commission claims? or is Jim Garrison right and the “magic bullet” theory is a fairy tale? It turns out that there is a great deal of evidence that settles the question beyond a reasonable doubt. Just consider the following for yourself.

Where was JFK hit in the back?

I presented a lecture at Cambridge University during an international conference, which was published in an international peer-reviewed journal under the title, “Reasoning about Assassinations”, which I thought had settled the matter. Here is the shirt and the jacket he was wearing, left behind at Parkland:

They both show holes about 5.5″ below the collar and just to the right of the spinal column. During one of his visits to the National Archives, David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., had a member of the staff put them on and determined that the hole in the shirt was slightly lower than the hole in the jacket. While some want to maintain that they were “bunched”, a wound at this location appears on the autopsy diagram:

The autopsy diagram was verified by Admiral George G. Burkley, the President’s personal physician, who also composed a death certificate on JFK, which described his death as the result of a massive wound to the back of the head and a second wound to his back at the level of the third thoracic vertebrae:

It will come as no surprise that the third thoracic vertebra is about 5.5″ below the collar, which confirms the other evidence from the shirt and the jacket he was wearing and the autopsy diagram. So we know where JFK was hit in the back, which was not at the base of back of the neck but 5.5″ below the collar.

The Warren Commission Reenactment

As though that were not proof enough, we also have an FBI Agent by the name of Sibert drew a sketch of the wound to the back in relation to the wound to the throat, which makes it very difficult to believe that a bullet that entered at the location he specifies at a downward angle could possibly have exited his throat:

And we have a great deal more, including Warren Commission staff reconstruction photos. Here is my favorite from the history of research on the assassination, featuring a young Arlene Specter, who is in the process of demonstrating the trajectory that the “magic bullet” would have taken where that theory true::

Since you can look below his hand and see the large patch on the back of the stand-in where the bullet had hit, a photograph intended to illustrate the “magic bullet” instead refutes it. And here the person who spent the most time with the body preparing it for burial describes the wounds that he observed:

Notice, in particular, that, in addition to the massive blow-out at the back of his head, the entry wound at the right temple and the small shrapnel wounds in his face, that the body had a “wound in back (5 to six inches) below shoulder to the right of back bone”. How much more proof do we need about its location?

The Gauthier-Callahan Memorandum

Larry Rivera, whom I regard as one of the best of a new generation of students of JFK, has unearthed an obscure memorandum. On 27 January 1964, Leo Gauthier and Special Agent Lyndal Shaneyfelt of the FBI met with Warren Commission staff members Joseph Ball, David Belin, Melvin Eisenberg and Norman Redlich. The Secret Service was represented by Inspector Thomas Kelley, and John W. Howlett.

This meeting lasted eight and a half hours and its purpose was to discuss the Zapruder and Nix films and how they were going to frame the three shots to coincide with the film evidence. The most important part is the first paragraph on the second page, as you will observe, which appears to mark the origin of the “magic bullet” theory. It was not taken seriously at the time but would emerge as the crux of the official account by the publication of The Warren Report.

Bear in mind that the Secret Service and the FBI had both concluded the day of the assassination that there had been three shots and three hits: that JFK had been hit in the back (5.5″ below the collar) by the first shot; that Governor Connally had been hit in the back by the second; and that the third shot had hit JFK in the back of his head, killing him. That scenario would be upset by the discovery that James Tague, a distant bystander, had been injured by a shot that missed, which created the dilemma of adding a fourth or doing it all with only two.

The birth of the “magic bullet” theory

Apparently, this is when the bastard child known as the “magic bullet” theory was initially conceived. The cryptic passage highlighted here points the finger at “one staff member”, but which of the four would that have been? Even though Kelly dismisses this as a “ridiculous” notion, it would become incorporated as the lynchpin of The Warren Report (1964), in the absence of which there had to be at least six shots from three different directions:

The FBI appears to have been only interested in brokering the meeting and to have avoided becoming involved in the scheming. The Secret Service is on record here as rejecting the “magic bullet” theory as ludicrous, where it would be left to Arlene Specter as an Assistant Counsel to the Warren Commission to present the case for such an absurdity, but with a little help from Gerald Ford (R-MI), who changed the description of the back wound from “his uppermost back” which was already an exaggeration to read instead “the back of his neck”, whose role was revealed by documents released by the ARRB and promptly reported in The New York Times (3 July 1997):

It would turn out that the “magic bullet” theory is not even anatomically possible, as David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., would demonstrate by creating a CAT scan of a patient with chest and neck dimensions similar to those of JFK. When the official trajectory is imposed, it turns out to be anatomically impossible since cervical vertebra intervene. That any serious person should continue to defend it is simply beyond belief as a manifest absurdity.

The reason to insist on the “magic bullet” theory–even though it is false, provably false and indeed not even anatomically possible–is that it provides the simplest proof of conspiracy in the assassination of JFK. Merely by locating where he was hit in the back, we can establish that the wound to his throat and the wounds to Connally have to be accounted for on the basis of other shots and other shooters, which is why the media continues to lie to us.

Where did the bullet come from?

Once you understand where JFK was hit in the back–about 5.5″ inches below the collar to the right of his spinal column by a shallow shot that only entered about the length of your little finger at a downward angle and had no point of exit–it becomes effortless to lampoon the “magic bullet” theory, as was done so well in Oliver Stone’s film, “JFK”. Here is a diagram of the preposterous trajectory and and image of the “magic bullet” itself as well:

It has been widely assumed that Jack Ruby planted the “magic bullet” on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital on the day of the assassination. Imagine my astonishment to learn from a former neighbor of Secret Service Agent Sam Kinney, who drove the Secret Service Cadillac that followed the Presidential limousine, that Sam had confided in him that he had gone to the limo at Parkland and obtained a bucket of water and a sponge to wipe the blood and brains off the back seat–and in the process found a whole bullet, which he took inside the hospital and left on a stretcher. It appears to have been the bullet that hit JFK in the back, which worked itself out and fell on the seat.

Sam asked him not to reveal what he had been told until after his death, which occurred in 2000. His neighbor decided to wait until his wife had joined him, which took place in 2008. I was delighted when he came on my show to share this information with me on “The Real Deal” on 20 November 2013. I have said before and say again that if we know anything about the assassination of JFK, it is where he was hit in the back. Which means that anyone who continues to promote the “magic bullet” theory is either cognitively impaired or unfamiliar with the evidence–or attempting to play the public for saps. Don’t let them get away with it. You have the proof.

James H. Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a columnist for Veterans Today, where his most recent studies of the assassination of JFK can be found. [NOTE: This is one in a series of articles being republished since veterans today.com deleted them in a dispute with its Senior Editor, Gordon Duff, about which I have since written several articles.]

“As with Watergate, numerous lawyers were involved with the Warren Commission; in neither case did these lawyers act as lawyers. Rather, they participated in a cover-up and acted as accessories in serious crimes.”–Howard Roffman, Presumed Guilty (1976)

“If it is not an act of God, it is a conspiracy.” Jim Marrs (“The Real Deal”, 5/28/13)

Joseph Ball spanned most of the 20th century as one of the top lawyers in the country. He cut his teeth in the oil and gas industry in the 1920’s and was a member of the firm Ball, Hunt and Hart, from Long Beach and Santa Ana, California.

He also taught criminal law and procedure at the University of Southern California. At one point in his career he was offered, but turned down, a seat on the California Supreme Court.

Over the years, some of his clients included John D. Ehrlichman of Watergate fame, automaker John DeLorean, and Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi. He died September 21, 2000.[1]

As Assistant Counsel, Joseph Ball was one of the most prolific Warren Commission lawyers, leading and taking more than 100 depositions, most of them in Dallas, Texas.[2]For all of his qualifications, distinctions and immaculate reputation, it seems Mr. Ball was seduced by the dark side – the cabal that assassinated John F. Kennedy November 22, 1963. It is time to put Joseph Ball’s Warren Commission activities in the proper perspective, as they lay bare by the record.

A Problem with the Evidence

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Warren Commission’s inquiry was concealing the fact that only two spent and one unspent shell casings were found at the alleged 6th floor “assassin’s lair”. They were photographed by the DPD in Dallas and by the FBI. Here, for example, is an FBI evidence photo showing two spent casings and one unspent cartridge:

Even more interesting, here is an evidence photo that appeared in Jesse Curry’s JFK ASSASSINATION FILES, which he published after leaving the DPD, where he was Chief of Police during the assassination and its aftermath:

This photo is fascinating not only because it shows two spent cartridge casings (1) and one unspent cartridge (6) but because it also includes the paper bag (7) in which Lee Oswald is alleged to have brought the Mannlicher-Carcano into the TSBD. Anyone with experience with weapons knows that their parts are hard and unforgiving, where had this bag actually been used for that purpose, it would have been torn and oily, not clean and neat as though it had just come from a local “Five & Dime”.

Insofar as the alleged assassin was supposed to have fired three shots at his target, the Warren Commission had to figure out how to obfuscate and work around the evidence that contradicted its position, where Joseph Ball, Esq., would prove his value as an Assistant Counsel. Here is the story of how it was done as another crucial ingredient in the plot to frame an innocent man for the death of the 35th president of the United States.

The “Empty Shell” Game, Part I

Joseph Ball took the testimony of Luke Mooney, the Dallas Police Department Sheriff who first found the shell casings on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, which supposedly came from Lee Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano.[3] In Bloody Treason, Noel Twyman[4] established how Ball orchestrated the scenario where two empty shells and one live round, which had been found by Mooney, and documented by the FBI, was sanitized to officially become three empty shells, presumably left behind by Oswald in the sniper’s nest, and which would later become part of the official record [5].

Exhibit (1): From Mooney’s testimony:

Ball converts two casings and a live round into three “empty shells”

Exhibit (2): From Bloody Treason, Noel Twyman:

“The answer was clear (a) the evidence of three empty cartridge cases was fabricated, and (b) deputy sheriff Luke Mooney was led into testifying that there were three empty cartridges when there were in fact only two. I wondered how an honorable man such as Joseph Ball could have gotten himself involved in such a transparent scheme.” [6]

Exhibit (3): Two spent, one unspent shell from CE 2003:

Exhibit (4): The live round does not come from an M-C:

Exhibit (5): Dougherty’s story comports with two spent shells:

From HAVE WE IGNORED THE KEY WITNESS TO THE DEPOSITORY SHOT OR SHOTS?

By Frank A. Cellura (2000)

Exhibit (6): Focusing on Exhibit 10-14 rather than 10-15:

“One more important note in Joseph Ball’s questioning of deputy sheriff Mooney, he focused on Exhibit 10-14 (CE-510). Why did he choose Exhibit 10-14 instead of Exhibit 10-15 (CE-512), both of which are in the commission Report? The answer could be that Joseph Ball knew that Exhibit 10-14 was authentic and he could not understand Exhibit 10-15, so he avoided attracting attention to it.”[7]

CE716 (WC17H500) also shows the images that Twyman cited (CE510/512), but without the felt tip circles. Indeed, when we enlarge the images we confirm there is a problem with one of the “empty shell casings”, where it appears to be a live round. What Twyman and Cellura seem to have overlooked, however, is that the round is not for a Mannlicher Carcano. As far as calling Ball an “honorable man”, the rest of this article will show Twyman was being generous in his assessment of Ball.

Joseph Ball’s manipulation of Mooney’s testimony was only the beginning of his involvement with the empty shell game. As we move on, the stakes will move higher, and the shell game will rear its ugly head later, when we cover African American witnesses Harold Norman, Junior Jarman and Bonnie Ray Williams.

The “Empty Shell” Game, Part II

The presence of African American witnesses Bonnie Ray Williams, Harold Norman and James Jarman, who were photographed at the fifth floor windows by Tom Dillard right after the shots, has been examined at length by researchers and investigators.[8]They were brought to Washington on March 24, 1964, and were interviewed by Joseph Ball in the presence of John McCloy, Allen Dulles, Gerald Ford, and Earl Warren himself.[9] This should give the reader an idea of the importance of the testimony of these three gentlemen – and the degree of intimidation they must have been subjected to. Roy Truly accompanied the three to Washington for his first deposition as well.[10] All three of them had been thoroughly prepared and coached four days earlier (Friday, 3/20/64) in Dallas, when they did photo shoots, rehearsals, and re-creations with Joseph Ball on the 5th floor of the TSBD for the Commission.[11]

Of the three, Norman was the only one who said he heard the sound of a rifle bolt being operated in between shots, and the shells falling, after being ejected, onto the wooden floor right above the three men.

On November 26, 1963 Norman was interviewed by the FBI and made no mention about hearing shells and rifle action bolts.

Alas, by December 4th, he was brought in to swear an affidavit where he now stated he heard the above mentioned sounds.[12]This document was used later on to buttress his Secret Service Interview of 12/7/63.

Patricia Lambert wrote about Secret Service Report (SS491) in The Continuing Inquiry10/22/77 Vol 2, No 3 :[13]

Norman’s allegation that he heard the shells hit the floor and the bolt action of the rifle surfaced in toto in SS491. Twelve days after the assassination and eight days after his interview by the FBI, Norman’s startling disclosure made its belated appearance. Norman’s sworn affidavit to the Secret Service states:

“I knew that the shots had come from directly above me, and I could hear the expended cartridges fall to the floor. I could also hear the bolt action of the rifle. I also saw some dust fall from the ceiling of the fifth floor and I felt sure that whoever had fired the shots was directly above me.[7]”

Missing entirely from this new version is the description of Norman putting his head out the window and looking up toward the roof, a gesture which was witnessed by at least four people. Norman permanently eliminated this event from this testimony at this point. Also, the particles of dirt, which he told the FBI fell outside the building and prevented him from seeing anything when he looked up, are changed in this version to “some dust.” This dust fell “from the ceiling” inside the building and the intended implication appears to be that it was dislodged by the shells hitting the floor of the sniper’s nest.

“This then is Norman’s new story. Not only are the sounds of the gunman added for the first time, but one part of his earlier statement to the FBI is excised and another part altered to accommodate the new information. This new story transformed Norman from an inconsequential witness to one of major importance who provided firsthand evidence linking the shots that were fired at 12:30 to the hulls that were found on the sixth floor 40 minutes later. This important information became the focus of his interview three months later before the Warren Commission.”

Jarman and Williams both “corroborated” that Norman said he heard these sounds but they did not hear anything themselves.[14]Once again, an accomplished professor of law and veteran attorney such as Joseph Ball, surely would have known both Jarman’s and William’s statements about Norman telling them about shells hitting the wooden floor above them would have been pure hearsay, and would have been objected by any competent opposing counsel. So why did he pursue this line of questioning and allow it to stand for the record?

Ball shamelessly leads Williams’ hearsay and in the process allows Williams to declare Oswald the shooter! Law students should use this as an example of what NOT to do when taking depositions and testimonies, unless of course, you have an ulterior motive.

The onus of proof here obviously lies with Harold Norman. How could he specifically hear the shell casings hitting the floor, but he nor the others not hear the footsteps of a person running on the wooden floor right above him,[15]and which had empty spaces where flooring was in the process of being laid? Ball tried to sucker him into this and Norman refused to go along:[16]

As pointed out above, the Warren Commission conducted a re-creation, placing Norman on the fifth floor and working a rifle bolt right above him and letting empty shells hit the floor. Obviously, the Warren Commissioners were not convinced with Harold Norman’s testimony,

and they later made three different trips to Dallas to re-enact the shell game and find out for themselves if it was possible.[17] This illustrates how desperate they were to establish three shots, three shell casings and one patsy in a sling. Regrettably, and with Joseph Ball leading the way, three blue collar African Americans got caught in this intricate web of deception, having to go along with a very vital part of the Warren Commission’s railroad of Lee Oswald.

We close the shell game with this from Shirley Martin: [18]

The Missing Shell Chicanery

The commission confronted a problem. According to the account they were advancing, a lone gunman fired three shots from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, scoring two hits and one miss. The first hit allegedly entered the base of the back of JFK’s neck, passed through without encountering any bony structures and exited his throat, then entered the back of Gov. John Connally, shattering a rib, exiting his chest and hitting his right wrist before lodging itself in his right thigh.

They hoped that Arlen Specter’s skillful interrogation with hypothetical questions–“If we assume that the bullet entered here (at the back of the neck) and passed through without hitting any bony structures, would it be consistent with those assumptions to describe the wound here (at the front of his neck) as a wound of exit?”–without noticing the trajectory is not even anatomically possible.[19]

But only two spent shell casings and one unspent cartridge had been found at the alleged scene of the crime. If there were not three spent shell casings, then their case fell apart. They counted on Joseph Ball to perpetrate the charade, first by a series of interrogatories with Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney, which he performed by citing the shells as “A”, “B”, and “C”, where “A” and “B” were spent and “C” was unspent. But by omitting that crucial point, he concluded by referring to “the empty shells ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C'”, instead of referring to “the empty shells ‘A’ and ‘B’ and the unspent shell ‘C'”.

Given that verbal sleight-of-hand, which obfuscated the facts that two spent and one unspent shells had been recorded in evidence photographs, including one by the FBI, and that the one unspent shell was not even a Mannlicher-Carnao bullet, it was not that difficult to arrange confirming evidence from three young black men, whose own testimony was sufficiently malleable or subject to manipulation to make the case the commission wanted to make–regardless of the quantity and quality of the evidence that contradicted it.

Larry Rivera, the son of a career military man who served as CID officer in the Army and a Certified Network Engineer, has made a lifelong study of the JFK assassination. He has given interviews on the assassination to Spanish media and has the most complete dossier on Billy Nolan Lovelady ever done.

James H. Fetzer, a former Marine Corps
officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota
Duluth and a columnist for Veterans Today, where his most recent studies
of the assassination of JFK can be found. [NOTE: This is one in a series of articles being republished since
veterans today.com deleted them in a dispute with its Senior Editor,
Gordon Duff, about which I have since written several articles.]

References:

1. http://www.innsofcourt.org/Content/InnContent.aspx?Id=3114

2. JFK Assassination Debate, Mark Lane vs Joseph Ball (12/04/64) 2:04 YouTube. He also wrote Chapter 4 of The Warren Report which happens to be the most important chapter that railroads Lee Oswald.

3. WC3H281

4. Bloody Treason, Noel Twyman pgs 91-97

5. CE 510 & CE 512

6. OpCit pg 94

7. Ibid pg 97

8. The Continuing Inquiry Vol. V #7 2/21/81 pg 3

9. WC3H140

10. HSCA Norman interview by Day also WC3H140

11. CE482, CE490

12. CE493

13. SS491 (CD87 pages 775-797)

14. WC3H161 and WCH198 (Jarman and Williams)

15. The Continuing Inquiry, Vol. 7 (2/21/81), p. 3

16. WC3H191 How could Norman have heard spent shells and rifle bolt action over the report and reverberation of the shots themselves?